I think if he was still around, he’d be all for ActivityPub and stuff like Lemmy/Kbin.

I’d say to jump right into the 124v124. At that level, one player is not going to change the tide too much. (Its more akin to the battles in Planetside 2 than your standard Battlefield due to the sheer scope.)

Its basically the intro to the original Half-Life game. If you haven’t I’d highly suggest playing the original or getting Black Mesa which is a remake of the original by a third-party company but with Valve’s blessing to do so.

Hacked passwords?

Probably the impetus for the mass exodus at my old job was the “We’ll Miss You” Zoom call we had for a beloved senior developer. The company had recently added a new manager role that hadnt existed before and things were fine. The new guy started micromanaging like crazy. The SD who was leaving basically went off during the call about how the company didn’t need NG’s role and how it was burning people out.

I stuck around for another year-ish, and NG managed to make a group of about 20 developers dwindle to 5-ish. Saw the writing on the wall after getting shafted, changed jobs and am now making double that salary along with far less stress.

Heck, a few weeks ago people thought Lemmy as a whole wouldn’t take off due to tankies. Seems like everyone has defederated that bunch and has grown a lot.

Have you looked into trying Mabinogi? This is another MMORPG that is published by Nexon but it is still heavily rooted in the design of when it launched back in 2003, before WoW. The game is heavy on the social elements too.

You might be wondering why suggest such an old game? Well, a few weeks ago they announced that they’re working on porting the game to Unreal Engine such that they can future proof it and continue development all of these years later. Not sure if there is a Fediverse board/magazine/community for the game yet but there is an official Discord as well.

Get an ABL and forget about having to do it yourself.

Is there a way to unblock a community or user from the app?

If you’re good about treating it like cash, credit cards aren’t a bad thing. The cashback/rewards are nice as they are not taxable. (At least in the US)

That said, for some the temptation of credit is too much.